GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- In case anyone missed it, confessed 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh reminded those watching Monday's hearing that it fell on a major Muslim holy day.

And he did it with a grisly salute to his spiritual leader -- al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, still at-large.

Bin al Shibh, a Yemeni, blurted out his well wishes ''to the entire Muslim world,'' in honor of Eid al Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice -- and especially to ``Osama bin Laden, may God protect him.''

''I hope the jihad continues and strikes the heart of America with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction,'' bin al Shibh added -- before his trial judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, cut him off with ``that's quite enough.''

The outburst was quick, in Arabic, with a translator trying to keep up simultaneously -- so fast in fact that the military censor apparently did not manage to hit a mute button from the maximum-security court.

Bin al Shibh allegedly helped organize the Hamburg, Germany, cell of suicide bombers who hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed 2,973 people in the worst terror attack on U.S. soil.

On Monday he tried to enter a plea of guilty at his mass-murder trial, along with the four other accused. Henley postponed the issue to let prosecutors file a legal brief on whether they would have to actually go to trial -- and in bin al Shibh's case in particular because his Pentagon lawyer has challenged his mental competency to defend himself at trial.

Bin al Shibh, who is being administered psychotropic drugs at the Guantánamo prison camp, has been the most loquacious of the five Sept. 11 accused. At his June 5 arraignment, he blurted out that he too wanted to join in the hijackings but was twice turned down for a U.S. visa.

Eid al Adha is a major Muslim holiday that commemorates the time, as related in the Koran, when Allah stopped Ibrahim from sacrificing his son Ismael -- and let him slaughter a sheep instead.

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